Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77292 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77292 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
When I found Annalise in the darkened family room, she was shaking her arms and wiggling around in a circle. I squinted, trying to get a better look at her.
Was she sleep walking? Sleep rain dancing?
“Hey, what’s going on?” Wes whispered, walking into the room. “I heard you go downstairs and thought something might be wrong.”
“I don’t know. I followed her down here.”
Wes flipped a light switch and Annalise grinned at us, still wiggling her booty and waving her arms. She was very much awake.
“What are you doing?” I asked her, yawning.
“You said Mommy and Daddy can get out of bed whenever they want and dance in heaven. I think they’re dancing right now, and I wanted to dance with them.”
My heart filled with emotion and I looked at Wes. I was so freaking tired, and I wanted to go back to bed so badly. But I couldn’t make Annalise stop dancing. I was about to tell Wes he could go back to bed and I’d dance with Annalise when he spoke instead.
“If we’re gonna have a dance party, we need some music.”
He walked over to the digital control panel for Ben and Lauren’s sound system, pushing a few buttons. I was expecting rock or alternative, but he surprised me.
“Build Me Up Buttercup” by The Foundations started and Wes danced over to Annalise.
“May I have this dance?”
She laughed and nodded, and he took both her hands in his and they swayed together. Then he spun her around, and I knew Ben had danced with his daughter when he was alive. She knew exactly what to do.
I joined them, though I wasn’t much of a dancer. Wes, on the other hand, had moves. His rhythm was perfect and he was having fun with it. He gyrated his hips and kept his steps in time with the music as he danced over to me, and I laughed. In his white T-shirt and boxer briefs, with Annalise gazing at him adoringly, he was irresistible.
“The Way You Look Tonight” by Frank Sinatra came on next, and Wes put one arm around my waist and clasped our hands together with his other one, pulling our interlocked fingers up to his chest. His eyes locked on mine as we danced past the couch. Something about this moment was more intimate than the sex had been last night. It was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.
“Uncle Wes, dance me like that!” Annalise cried.
He winked at me before bending down to show Annalise how to waltz. Her eyes shone with happiness as she danced and called out, “Look at us, Mommy and Daddy! We’re dancing, too!”
I wiped my tears away quickly, not wanting her to think I was sad. Because while this moment was bittersweet, there was a lot more sweetness than bitterness.
The song ended, and “Let Love In” by the Goo Goo Dolls—Lauren’s favorite—started up. We did a dance circle, Annalise’s smile never fading. She was having the time of her life.
Song after song, we danced for nearly an hour before Annalise announced she was tired and wanted to go back to bed. We all got some water and headed back upstairs, Wes taking my hand outside the doorway of Ben and Lauren’s room after Annalise had walked in.
He gave me a quick, chaste kiss and squeezed my hand, not saying a word.
I ignored the feelings building inside my chest as I crawled back into bed. I wasn’t going to waste this precious chance to sleep by spending it overanalyzing. Sleep was too precious a commodity in this house.
Chapter Fifteen
Wes
The end of the regular season was just a couple of weeks away as we hit the road at the end of March and the mood in the locker room was dismal. We were losing fifty percent of our games, both at home and away, and nothing anyone did seemed to work. I was trying my best but I was tired. I had to help out at home no matter how much I wanted and needed to rest, and though Tori was a big help, she was in school and couldn’t work as many hours as we wanted her to. The solution would be to go through an agency and find someone who could work a full-time schedule, but a college student was more along the lines of what we wanted, instead of someone who would come in with agency rules and regulations.
Benny was sleeping better, thank God, but still only about seven or eight hours at a stretch, which meant we were always up late and awake early. We tried to alternate nights so we each got a little sleep, but it didn’t always work because Annalise refused to sleep in her own bed, which was also cutting into our sex life. We’d only had sex a couple of times since that first night and now I was gone again.